Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to the field of integrated circuit (IC) device packaging technology. In one aspect, the present invention relates to ball grid array (BGA) packages for RF and millimeter wave (mmW) integrated circuit having improved isolation performance.
Description of the Related Art
As the density and complexity of integrated circuit devices increases and the size of such devices shrinks, significant challenges are posed in the design and packaging of these devices. One challenge is that more and more power and signal lines must be electrically connected to the integrated circuit die as the circuit complexity increases, though there is less and less space to allow for such connection as the device sizes shrink. Another challenge is that the conventional approaches for packaging the integrated circuit devices—such as the ball grid array (BGA), the land grid array (LGA), and the pin grid array (PGA) packages—can lead to electromagnetic signal interference between signal lines (e.g., for transmit and receive channels), especially as the spacing decreases between signal lines at the external package substrate surface of RF and millimeter wave (mmW) devices. As a result, the existing packaging solutions for isolating the channels on packaged integrated circuit devices make the signal line isolation extremely difficult at a practical level.